Missions

Tonight I got to be present as my little brother, Jeremy, was set apart to serve as a full-time missionary for our church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and it was sort of the culmuination of contemplation for me. I say culmination, but really I'm sure I'll continue thinking about it, but it certainly was the peak of the last couple of weeks. I haven't had any really terrific advice for him because I'm not sure anything I experienced will apply and even if it will, they are the sort of things you have to learn first-hand. Thinking back to my time in Salt Lake City and the surrounding area, I have some very good memories and very good feelings. At the same time, I have some very negative feelings towards the experience, simply because of the rigorous and restrictive lifestyle. I've often wished you could have the great experiences without all of the rules, and I keep coming to the point when I realize you can't have the one without the other. Though I seem to have more time now than then, I choose to NOT spend it helping others. I'm very selfish with my free time and tend to do things that relax or otherwise please me, something I sorely wished I could do every so often as a missionary (P-day's are NOT relaxing). But if I HAD had the opportunity to relax instead of constantly serve, I'm sure I wouldn't have accomplished near as much as I did. I wouldn't have helped as many people and they would not have helped me, so the rules are perfectly proper and ought to not be loosened. With this realization I've come to accept that my heart just has a hard time constantly putting others first. I hardly think I'm alone in that, but I do think that in order to understand Christ and draw closer to Him (and strive to be LIKE Him) we need to train our hearts to be that way. Even when He was exhausted, He taught. He loved even when His love wasn't sought or desired. He blessed as He suffered in agony. He had and has perfect charity, and I find myself struggling to even desire to have that sort of love. In some very abstract way I really care about people, but there are few that I really depend on and miss when they're absent. It's like living in a memory, if that makes any sense, where the idea of an individual is often sufficient. That made missionary life difficult; I served faithfully and obediently and it changed my life for the better, but I don't know that I ever fully learned the lesson of loving the individual. I hope Jeremy learns that lesson quickly because I know he'll be much, much happier if he does. I think he already has, listening to him talking about friends and acquaintances. I think he'll be absolutely great and the Scottish people are quite blessed to have him serving among them.